


We Have Not Long to Love

by crescendi



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Established Relationship, F/M, Impending Apocalypse, Implied Sexual Content, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Relationship Study, au where they have more time i guess, ok thats just a new way to say fluff admit it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-10
Updated: 2018-12-10
Packaged: 2019-09-15 22:11:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16941630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crescendi/pseuds/crescendi
Summary: (or: the only thing that matters)She can pretend they’re just two people in love as she leans over him.She drags her hands over his ribs, trying to memorize the feel of them under her palms. Then she lowers herself down to kiss him, the only thing that really matters to her right now.I could, but do not, breakthat which is still.(Almost the faintest whisperwould be shrill.)So moments pass as thoughthey wished to stay.We have not long to love.A night. A day....- Tennessee Williams, We Have Not Long to Love





	We Have Not Long to Love

**Author's Note:**

> this isn't even COHERENT

 Meg Masters is hopelessly, desperately, in love with the angel Castiel.

As she lies awake with him, head, pressed into the muscle just left of the angle of his elbow, he privately thinks she is some kind of miracle. The clock ticks painfully loud.

She rolls over, away from him. He rolls with her, so his stomach is against her back. Her cheap lipstick is smeared across his lips and neck. They are the only thing that really matter.

The clock ticks down to the third apocalypse this decade. His chin rests between her third and second vertebrae. Their legs stay intertwined. Neither move.

* * *

 

They interlock like pieces in a puzzle, her hand resting on the on the back of his neck, his hand curling around her hip, chests maybe too close together, breaths mingling. They shuffle in an imperfect dance to a song neither of them recognize, about someone who is lonely and in love.

Castiel hums along, hitting the notes just a fraction of a second behind. Meg laughs a little. All she can think as she looks into his eyes is that she would change the world for this angel.

As they dance into a patch of sunlight, he twirls her in a circle and bends down to kiss her.

* * *

The clock reads 3:22 AM. Neither can, or willing to, sleep.

The light thrown from the lamp’s lightbulb encircles Meg’s head into a fluorescent halo. Castiel traces the line of her left arm’s radius, stretching from her elbow to thumb. And instead of bringing his hands downward, he lifts them up to cup her face, arguably a far more intimate move than if he’d slipped his fingers under her waistband.

His hair is tousled and messy and dark. His eyes are clear and blue. They hold no malice—at least, none ever directed toward her. She’s sick of metaphors but she’s reminded of a river that moves too fast to be frozen. 

Her eyes flicker shut; she expects a kiss.

His hands lift from her face for a moment, and in the moment, she is alone.

Then his hands resettle on her shoulders, and they fall backwards, bodies pressed against each other, as one.

* * *

 

They have what feels like countless moments of casual intimacy. It’s almost domestic, how he reads aloud from Emily Dickinson: Selected Poems as she bathes, absorbing the lilt of his steady voice over the gentle slosh of water. How she runs her fingers through his dark hair, distracting him from whatever task is at hand. It’s a little terrifying how he turns so helpless under her touch, this ancient winged creature created to kill her kind, that her kind was taught to hate.

She can’t even blame Dean for the way he feels. It’s so fucking obvious; it’s written, visible as freshly spilled blood on snow, in the way he looks at him, in the break of his voice when he says  _ Dammit, Cas, _ in the little almost-touches.

Who  _ wouldn’t  _ love Castiel?

Dean would die a thousand deaths before he let anyone lay a finger on Castiel. She would too, but the difference is she would  _ live  _ for him too. The breath in her lungs and the beat of a heart that are not her own would be fueled by the knowledge someone as kind as Castiel had ever existed at all.

That’s why she says,  _ go talk to him, he was your boyfriend first,  _ before turning away with the nurse’s cart in tow.

As long as Castiel is happy, she can be happy.

* * *

 

Meg finds comfort in Castiel’s arms. Castiel finds comfort in hers. She could stay here for days. They probably don’t have days.

But every hour, minute, second, counts.

He is asleep and she lays awake, throat itching with thirst. 

She, carefully, as not to disturb him, disentangles herself and quietly goes to get herself a drink of water.

When she returns, thirst quenched, he is awake and sitting up, brow furrowed. His shoulders relax when he lays eyes on her.

_ Hey,  _ she says.  _ Just went to get a glass of water. _

_ I thought you’d left me,  _ he says.

_ Don’t even dream of it, Clarence. _

She can pretend they’re just two people in love as she leans over him.

She drags her hands over his ribs, trying to memorize the feel of them under her palms. Then she lowers herself down to kiss him, the only thing that really matters to her right now.

* * *

 

Meg tilts her head and rolls her shoulders as Castiel, with a feather-touch, runs his fingers down her rachis. He counts each knobble of her spine.

She feels the tile under her palms and under her ass. Castiel sprawls out behind her, on his stomach. He censors himself, despite the fact they’ve already had sex, his fingers pausing just above the last bone of her lumbar.

She leans back, resting her head on his collarbone, and closes her eyes.

Castiel is all things light in this world. (Isn’t that what all angels are? Light? But Castiel seems to have an excess of it. It spills from his every pore.)

Castiel’s name falls off her tongue like how good whisky goes down your throat, the kind that leaves an aftertaste of something like the ideas of bumblebees, if such a thing could have a taste.

As she moves her mouth over his bare skin on late nights, and he sighs out her name, she thinks she tastes something like honey, almost.

* * *

_ These wounds have festered,  _ he murmurs, eyebrows furrowed, sorrow and concern leaving his face, and a mask of steady quiet taking over it as he bandages her up. Castiel’s touch is a surgeon’s touch; he is in his natural element when he is mending a wound.

Meg studies him openly. (There is no need to hide anything from him.) He notices, but does not comment.  _ You really do know how to make a girl’s nether’s quiver, don’t you?  _ she half-purls.

He looks a little older. A little sadder.

She feels more at peace with him than she has for perhaps her entire life.

_ I am aware of how to do that.  _ Castiel keeps glancing at her, away from her injury.  _ Although it doesn’t usually involve...cleaning wounds.  _ An edge of sarcasm (or perhaps exasperation) finds itself in his voice.

She can’t stop smiling. Maybe it’s Castiel, but it’s so fucking nice to be  _ touched  _ after a year of torture. And it’s so fucking nice to see Castiel again, too.

Meg doesn’t understand why he’s doing this. Why he treats her so tender. Why he always looked at her like she was the only thing—or at least, the only thing that matters, with that soft little just-smile that curls the edges of his mouth.

_ Why are so sweet on me, Clarence? _

_ I don’t know. _

**Author's Note:**

> the reason why i find megstiel more compelling than destiel is bc destiel has been dragged out by queerbaiting and shitty writing lmao but rest assured i DO like destiel  
> anyway deanmegstiel would be the ULTIMATE ot3 and it only didn't happen bc the writers are cowards


End file.
